RNC Convention to be a ‘Showdown,’ But No Guns Allowed

With the fights at rallies, Donald Trump’s campaign manager charged with battery, a girl getting groped and pepper sprayed, you’d think all the excitement is in the audience in the political campaign, but the candidates are doing plenty of fighting, too.

Yes, there was the attack ad on Trump’s wife, his response of forwarding a tweet of Cruz’ wife, and the news that Rubio’s people were probably behind it all. But let’s get serious. These guys are now at the point where they hate each other.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday abandoned a pledge to support a party presidential nominee other than himself, a sign of increasing friction with chief rival Ted Cruz.

“No, I don’t anymore,” Trump replied, when asked at a CNN town hall event whether he still supported a pledge he made last year to support whoever is the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election.

Trump’s signing of a loyalty pledge last September was important in helping him gain credibility within the Republican National Committee. The pledge was also signed by all his rivals for the presidential nomination.

His aboutface came as he tries to fend off a challenge from Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas who is running second to the New York billionaire in the race for the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.

That’s not new. Trump began by saying he might run an independent campaign, then decided to run as a Republican. However, the party has never embraced him, so even though he was pressured to pledge to support the eventual nominee, he said that depended on how he was treated. Both the Republican Establishment and the Conservative Establishment have been attacking Trump, both behind the scenes, in print, and even in campaign ads.

Now Cruz is also saying he might not support Trump, if Trump is the nominee.

Cruz, asked earlier at the CNN town hall whether he also would honor the pledge to support the nominee if it was not himself, declined to give a straight answer. . .

I watched him tonight and I watched how tormented he was when you asked him that question,” Trump told CNN moderator Anderson Cooper. “I don’t want to have him be tormented. Let me just tell you I don’t want his support, I don’t need his support.

As well as Kasich:

“If the nominee is somebody I think is really hurting the country, and diving the country, I can’t stand behind them,” Kasich said.

Meanwhile, as some of the former candidates have backed either Trump or Cruz, Rubio is fighting to hold his delegates, in hopes that a contested convention will turn to him.

Rubio aide Alex Burgos told MSNBC that while the Florida senator is “no longer a candidate,” he “wants to give voters a chance to stop Trump.”. . .

Delegate allocation decisions are up to each state party, not the RNC.

Alaska’s party rules say delegates can be taken from a candidate if he “drops out” before the state’s convention.

Since those rules do “not use the word ‘suspend’,” Goldberg said he decided Rubio could keep his delegates, while acknowledging that previously, “we’ve always taken ‘suspend’ to mean ‘drop.'”

We have gotten to a place where politicians are not only saying they won’t support the initial candidate—some have said they would vote for the Democratic nominee, instead.

Things have gotten so bad that more than 50,000 people have signed a petition to allow guns at the RNC convention.

More than 42,000 [50,000 by the time of writing] people have signed the petition, which appeared on Change.org last week and originally set a goal of just 5,000 signatures. Signatories are asking the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, the R.N.C.’s convention venue, to override its no-gun policies and allow attendees to open-carry approved weapons. While people are legally allowed to openly carry firearms in Ohio, the stadium itself does not allow guns inside.

To be fair, according to Guns.com, the petition was started by a Democrat, known only as, “Jim,” to embarrass the GOP.

“There were never going to be guns at the convention. Not a million signatures were going to make that happen,” he says.

But he also knew that if the Republican candidates sincerely meant what they have been saying about expanding Second Amendment rights, it would logically follow that they should support a move to allow firearms at the convention. “If they can’t live in accordance with the policies they impose upon us, they owe us that rational conversation,” Jim said.

The U.S. Secret Service will not allow people to carry guns into the July Republican National Convention in Cleveland, quashing the hopes of more than 45,000 people who have signed a petition saying attendees should be allowed to bring firearms.

The Secret Service said on Monday it has the authority to preclude guns from sites visited by the people it protects such as U.S. presidential candidates, presidents and former presidents.

“Only authorized law enforcement personnel working in conjunction with the Secret Service for a particular event may carry a firearm inside of the protected site,” agency spokesman Robert Hoback said in a statement.

Goethe Behr is a Contributing Editor and Moderator at Election Central. He started out posting during the 2008 election, became more active during 2012, and very active in 2016. He has been a political junkie since the 1950s and enjoys adding a historical perspective.